Tuesday, May 18, 2010

One nice feature we offer on all of our Sarasota wedding photography packages is the fact that we both take photos during the ceremony. It's no secret that Jason is the photographer (the business is named after him for a reason), but I have always had a pretty good "eye" for candid photos and part of what I do as his assistant is run around whispering in his ear about things I see happening that I think he should snap a photo of right away.

Lately, I've been picking up the camera more and more in our personal life to take cute candid shots of our adorable nephews, kids of our friends, and of course, our dog. Like I said before, I've got a pretty good eye for this sort of thing.

During wedding ceremonies, Jason usually sets me up with a long zoom lens at the back of the aisle or in a church balcony and figures out all the camera settings for me - then I stand there and zoom in and out and hit the button.

I usually get lots of good shots but if I try to move the camera around at all or take it off the tripod for candids after the ceremony, I am in trouble because all the settings Jason did for me don't work in a different lighting situation. He's offered to teach me how to use the camera many times, but I always turn him down... until last night...

We've been talking a lot about how I could be both part-time assistant and part-time photographer during both Sarasota weddings and Siesta Key beach portrait sessions. Sometimes, you really need two sets of eyes and multiple cameras to truly capture everything that is going on! But, in order for this to really work, I needed to know a little bit more about the camera. After all, Jason can't always stop what he is doing to set things up for me and in most low light conditions, "auto" just won't cut it. So, last night, I broke down and asked him to teach me a few things about manual mode. Although I definitely would not consider myself anywhere near a pro, I picked up what he showed me really quickly and have a MUCH better handle on manual mode now. I took a few random photos in our backyard - I learned how to meter the background, make a blurry or non-blurry background, and got a cute photo or two of my favorite beagle.